Glottalic theory
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The glottalic theory holds that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, p’ t’ k’, but not the murmured ones, bʱ dʱ gʱ, of traditional Proto-Indo-European reconstructions.
A forerunner of the theory was proposed by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen, but did not involve glottalized sounds. While early linguists such as André Martinet and Morris Swadesh had seen the potential of substituting glottalic sounds for the supposed plain voiced stops of Proto-Indo-European, the proposal remained speculative until substantial evidence for it was simultaneously but independently published in 1973 by Paul Hopper of the United States in the journal Glossa and by Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov of the Soviet Union in the journal Phonetica.
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[edit] Traditional reconstruction
The traditional reconstruction of Indo-European includes the following stop consonants:
| CONSONANTS | labials | dentals | palatalized velars | velars | labialized velars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiceless stops | p | t | kʲ | k | kʷ |
| voiced stops | (b) | d | gʲ | g | gʷ |
| breathy voiced stops | bʱ | dʱ | gʲʱ | gʱ | gʷʱ |
/b/ is parenthesized because it is at best very rare and perhaps nonexistent.
Historically, this inventory was not introduced as an independent proposal, but instead arose as a modification of an earlier, typologically more plausible theory. In the original Proto-Indo-European proposal, there was a fourth phonation series, aspirated /pʰ, tʰ, kʲʰ, kʰ, kʷʰ/, assumed to exist by analogy with Sanskrit, which at the time was thought to be the most conservative Indo-European language. However, it was later realized that this series was unnecessary and was generally the result of a sequence of a tenuis stop such as /t/ and a laryngeal such as /h/. The aspirate series was removed, but the breathy voiced consonants remained.
[edit] Problems
There are several problems with this reconstruction. The first is the rarity of b. From a typological point of view, if a single voiced stop is missing from a phoneme inventory (a 'gap'), it would normally be /g/ that is missing; on the other hand, if a voiceless stop is missing, the labial /p/ is the most likely candidate. With ejectives, it is close to universal for a gap to be /p’/.
Secondly, there are few languages which have breathy voiced consonants but no voiceless aspirates, and yet fewer that also contrast breathy voice with full voice. Roman Jakobson has asserted that no such language is known; however, this is disputed by some linguists who oppose the theory. For example, Robert Blust showed that a system of voiceless, voiced and murmured stops, as postulated in the traditional reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, exists in Kelabit, a language of the Sarawak highlands in Borneo. Nevertheless, the traditional reconstruction remains a typological oddity.
The third issue is a longstanding but unexplained observation of Indo-Europeanists about the distribution of stops in word roots. It had long been noted that certain combinations of consonants were not represented in Proto-Indo-European words. In terms of the traditional system, these were:
- No root contained a sequence of two plain voiced stops, that is, in schematic terms, there were no roots of the type *deg.
- No root contained both a voiceless stop and a voiced aspirate, that is, roots of the type *dhek or *tegh were not attested.
- On the other hand, the plain voiced stops were compatible with either of the other two series: *degh or *dek were both possible.
These constraints on the phonological structure of the root cannot be explained in terms of a theory of assimilation or dissimilation, since they display a radical difference in patterning between two sets of consonants — the voiced stops — that ought to behave identically. Typologically, this is also very odd.
[edit] Original glottalic proposal
The glottalic theory proposes different phonetic values for the stop inventory of Proto-Indo-European:
| CONSONANTS | labials | dentals | velars | labialized velars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiceless stops | p ~ pʰ | t ~ tʰ | k ~ kʰ | kʷ ~ kʷʰ |
| ejective or glottalized stops | (p’) | t’ | k’ | kʷ’ |
| voiced stops | b ~ bʱ | d ~ dʱ | ɡ ~ ɡʱ | ɡʷ ~ ɡʷʱ |
Hopper (1973) also proposed that the aspiration that had been assumed for the voiced stops bh, dh, gh could be accounted for by a low-level phonetic feature known to phoneticians as "breathy voice." This proposal made it possible both to establish a system in which there was only one voiced stop and at the same time to explain developments in later Indo-European dialects (Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit) that pointed to some kind of aspiration in the voiced series.
Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1973, 1995:5-70) have posited that both non-ejective series (traditional *p *t *k and *bh *dh *gh) were fundamentally aspirated (that is, *ph *th *kh and *bh *dh *gh) but had non-aspirated allophones (that is, *p *t *k and *b *d *g). According to them, the non-aspirated forms occurred in roots where two non-ejectives were present because of a rule that prohibited more than one aspirate in the same root. To express the variability of aspiration Gamkrelidze and Ivanov write it with a superscripted h, for example dʰ. Thus an Indo-European DʰeDʰ (where Dʰ represents any non-ejective stop) might be realized as DeDʰ (attested by Indic and Greek) or as DʰeD (attested by Italic). In contrast, traditional theory would trace a form attested as both DeDh and DheD to an Indo-European DheDh. The advantage of this interpretation over the previous is circumventing the typological oddity of the language having only voiced aspirates by identifying the voiceless non-aspirates of the traditional stop system (*p *t *k) as voiceless aspirates (*pʰ *tʰ *kʰ).
[edit] Consequences
The stop system proposed by glottalic theory is common among the world's languages; especially p’ is cross-linguistically a much rarer sound than the other ejectives. Moreover, the revised system explains a number of phonological peculiarities in the reconstructed system. In addition to motivating the absence of a labial plain voiced stop *b in the proto-language, the theory provides a completely coherent explanation to the patterning of the stop series in roots (Hopper 1973):
- In very many languages that have glottalic consonants, there is a constraint against two such consonants in the same root. This constraint has been found in many languages of Africa, the Americas, and the Caucasus.
- If the "plain voiced stops" were not voiced, then the "voiced aspirated stops" were the only voiced stops. The second constraint can accordingly be reformulated as: Two nonglottalic stops must agree in voicing.
- Since the glottalic stops were outside the voiced/voiceless opposition, they were immune from the constraint on voicing agreement in (2).
[edit] Decem and Taihun
In 1981 Hopper proposed to divide all Indo-European languages into Decem and Taihun groups, according to the pronunciation of the numeral 10, by analogy with the Centum-Satem isogloss, which is based on the pronunciation of the numeral 100. The Armenian, Germanic, Anatolian and Tocharian subfamilies belong to the Taihun group because the numeral 10 begins from the voiceless t there. All other Indo-European languages belong to the Decem group because the numeral 10 begins from the voiced d in them. The question then becomes which, if either, of these groups reflects the original state of things, and which is an innovation.
[edit] Objections
The primary objection to the glottalic theory is the difficulty in explaining how the sound systems of the attested dialects were derived from a parent language in the above form. If the parent language had a typologically unusual system, like the traditional p-b-bh, then it might be expected to collapse into more typical systems, possibly with different solutions in the various daughter languages, which is what one finds. For example, Indo-Iranian added an unvoiced aspirate series, gaining an element of symmetry; Greek and Italic devoiced the murmured series to a more common aspirate series; Balto-Slavic deaspirated the murmured series to modal voice; and Germanic and Armenian chain-shifted all three series. In each case, the attested system represents a change that could be expected from the proposed parent.
Now if the system were typologically common, as proposed by the glottalic theory, then it might be expected to be stable and therefore to have been preserved in at least some of the daughter languages, which is not the case: no daughter language preserves ejective sounds where the glottalic theory postulates them. However, if Proto-Indo-European did not have true ejectives but rather some less stable kind of glottalic consonant, their loss would be more understandable. However, even "stable" systems change, and an objection based on what "should" have happened cannot really overturn a serious and otherwise well-motivated reconstruction. In all reconstructions of phonological systems one proceeds by comparing the evidence of the daughter languages and projecting them back to a common proto-form, not by first declaring this or that change to be a priori implausible.
Opponents of the glottalic theory have objected that it is not based on any direct evidence. Although murmured consonants are uncommon, they are at least directly attested in the Indo-Aryan languages (which is why they were postulated in the first place). But the reconstruction of proto-languages is often based on indirect indications. Even in the traditional reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, for example, there is no direct evidence for a voiced aspirated labiovelar stop gʷʱ.
Some have assumed that the glottalic theory represents an earlier stage in the history of Proto-Indo-European, which developed into the traditional system in later Proto-Indo-European. This would explain both the root restrictions in Proto-Indo-European and the universal loss of glottalic consonants in the daughter languages, but would leave us with a proto-language phonological system identical to the one that has been criticized, and also assumes a long period of internal evolution within which Proto-Indo-European would have been otherwise uniform before branching out into the daughter languages.
[edit] Revised proposal
One objection that has been raised against the glottalic reconstruction is that the voiced stops are voiceless in some daughter languages: unvoiced in Tocharian and Anatolian, aspirates, later fricatives in Greek and Italic. While it is common for aspirates to become tenuis and then voiced, as pʰ → p → b, the reverse is rare. (See lenition.) Thus more recent versions of the glottalic theory hypothesis do not have voiced consonants at all, or treat voicing as non-distinctive. Such an inventory is:
| CONSONANTS | labials | dentals | velars | uvulars | labialized velars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiceless stops | p | t | k | q | kʷ |
| ejective or glottalized stops | (p’) | t’ | k’ | q’ | kʷ’ |
| aspirated stops | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | qʰ | kʷʰ |
(Here the traditional palatalized vs. plain velar dichotomy is treated as a velar-uvular contrast, as posited by Hopper 1981. This is not required for the glottalic theory, and may have been allophonic at an early stage in the proto-language.)
[edit] Further arguments
According to its proponents, the glottalic theory neatly resolves a number of problems that it was not designed to solve, in effect giving it some empirical support. For example, in both Latin (Lachmann's law) and Balto-Slavic (Winter's law), vowels are lengthened before a "voiced" consonant. This had always been somewhat puzzling. It is the same behaviour that vowels exhibit before Proto-Indo-European laryngeals, which are assumed to have included a glottal stop. It may be that the glottalic consonants were preglottalized, or that they were ejectives that became preglottalized in Italic and Balto-Slavic before losing their glottalization and becoming voiced. It is very common in the world's languages for glottal stops to drop and lengthen preceding vowels. In Quileute, for example, the sequences VC’V, VʔC’V, and VːC’V, as found for example in ak’a ~ a’k’a ~ āk’a, are allophones in free variation.
[edit] Current status
Having enjoyed a period of rather wide acceptance in the 1980s, the glottalic theory has waned again. Some long-time supporters, like Theo Vennemann, have recently changed their mind (e.g. Vennemann 2006). The most recent publication supporting the glottalic theory is Bomhard (2007) in a discussion of the controversial Proto-Nostratic hypothesis.
[edit] Sources
- Robert S.P. Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. John Benjamins, 1995.
- Allan R. Bomhard, Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic: Comparative Morphology, Phonology, and Vocabulary. Charleston: Signum, 2007.
- Anthony Fox, Linguistic Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 1995.
- Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vjacheslav V. Ivanov, Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, translated by Johanna Nichols, 2 volumes. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995.
- Paul J. Hopper, Glottalized and murmured occlusives in Indo-European. Glossa 7:2:1973, 141-166.
- Theo Vennemann, Grimm’s Law and loanwords. Transactions of the Philological Society 104:2:2006, 129-166.
